


Photographs

by FuriousPoplar



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Adopted Sibling Relationship, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives/Nobody Dies, Flashbacks, Fluff, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, POV Third Person, Post-Pacifist Route, Queerplatonic Relationships, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 23:11:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12023037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FuriousPoplar/pseuds/FuriousPoplar
Summary: One more trip down memory lane couldn't hurt. Although, Chara is starting to wonder if they may have lost something along the way.





	Photographs

**Author's Note:**

> Hey did you know that I'm not dead?
> 
> I finished act one of that big project I've vaguely alluded to. It's at 33,000 words and 8 chapters or so right now. I meant to take a break from that to go write something else so I could actually UPLOAD something, but that small break turned into two months of occasionally touching this and playing lots and lots of shooty games.
> 
> I'm not going to start uploading anything from the big boi until Act 2 is done, I don't want to go on 'hiatus' and leave an unfinished story sitting for months on end. So I'll be back in like Q3 2018 or something, I guess.

                They knew they weren’t supposed to be up as late as they were. They had always known, from the first time they had snuck out of their and Asriel’s room to click away at a tangled mess of pink yarn in the living room in secret. Concepts such as _rest_ and _sleep_ were not lost on them; but in the same way that _brush your teeth_ and _do not play with that knife of yours, sweetie_ and _please be careful_ seem to pass right through them like a meager breeze through a house with both doors open, the importance of the act was something they were quick to dismiss. Instead, they allowed the warm light of the lamp that had always sat next to their mother’s reading chair to attract them like a moth. Maybe to read, maybe to work, maybe simply to sit for a while, they would spend countless late hours out of bed, with nobody any the wiser.

Chara turned the page of the scrapbook, letting it bend and warp as it slid past their thumb and settled onto the pile. They had been finding it more difficult to sneak out, these days. Their old house didn’t have a creaky staircase to contend with. Frisk, too, often proved to be an obstacle; they were nowhere near as heavy of a sleeper as their brother. They have had many getaways cut short by being forced to pretend they were only leaving for the washroom.

But that night, they were in luck. The house was entirely silent, a tranquil sort of weight seeming to hang in the air, like a heavy blanket upon their back. As the yellow lamplight flushed out the blue-black haze of the night from the room, their hands glided over photograph after photograph, taped and glued onto rough-edged yellowed pages in a tattered old scrapbook. Its cover was a deep, rich purple, embroidered with a white Delta Rune in the center that had been partially scratched away, the cardboard beneath exposed. The book had been new, once, with a smooth, glossy cover and sharp, crisp pages. Countless years had reduced it to tatters.

The book was Asgore’s doing, of course. Toriel had never felt the same need to preserve the present as her partner or son did. He had never quite explained himself, or why he felt the book was necessary. Chara had once (silently, of course) questioned him, and wondered why it would be worth the effort, especially after the first had been filled and another started. That part of him, and of their brother, it had once perplexed them. That need to bottle up memories, to trap them in little laminated cages so they could collect dust on the shelf, cataloged into grids upon grids, prisoners locked away in cell blocks of parchment.

But here they were, on visitation. Their eyes wandering the time-weathered halls, peering into every cell to see the perfect snapshots of times long past. Many of the pictures brought a nostalgic feeling to them, an aching yet passionate fondness that came paired with a delayed smile. One of Asriel’s best drawings. Asriel locking them into a hug that they did not return, but were allowing to happen nonetheless. Pie crumbs dotting their flushed cheeks, them having noticed the camera all too late. Others stung, the happiness they had captured now taunting them, making a mockery of everything that had happened since. The ones with their mom and dad together stung the most.

A small few, they could not look at. The blurred shapes and colors in their peripherals were all they needed to see for their heart to tense, as though they were staring a dangerous beast in the eyes. Their memory of the pictures remained intact and crystal clear, despite the years. It took only a glance for the context of each to come flooding back to them. They glanced over a photo of themselves sitting alone in the garden. Asriel was behind the camera, they remembered. In the picture, they’ve barely turned to look at him, their hair hanging loosely over their eye. Their friends would argue, they imagined, that it was a nice picture of them. They wouldn’t know that it was taken moments before they had asked if he would miss them if they were to die.

“That is plenty for one night,” they whispered to nobody, gently folding the book closed. They stared at the blank back cover, left with a warm but muted feeling, like the glow of a campfire’s embers after dark. Silently, they returned to their room, the scrapbook tucked into the crook of their arm, rustling faintly as the rough, scraped up cover rubbed against their pajamas.

Only Asgore knew they had that book, along with its three companions. It hadn’t been a gift, exactly; they both knew that he would never find the courage to look through those pictures again, and so he handed them off to Chara. They seemed to be the only one who cared anymore. Asriel had given up his camera a long time ago. After moving to the surface, there were still pictures, of course, more than ever thanks to Frisk. The family tradition had lived on through them, it seemed, a never-ending drip-feed hopping between groupchats. But they held no knowledge of these old books. Maybe only Chara did anymore, Asgore having forgotten them entirely. They kneeled down and buried the book away with the others at the bottom of their underwear drawer. As snoopy as Frisk can be, they figured, they would never be so crass as to look there (at least, they certainly hoped not). There was also their nightstand, and its own small drawer, their no-peeking-allowed one for all their special personal items, but, truth be told, they had never trusted it fully. They slid the drawer closed and climbed back into bed.

 

…

 

                Asriel scanned over the tops of the cartridges yet again, searching for the one that had been asked of him. The scratched-up, faded plastic seemed to let off a dusty sort of aroma, their age reeking off of them.

“I still don’t see it,” he said, looking over his shoulder back towards Frisk, sitting upside-down on the couch and kicking their feet of the back. Their hair pooled on the floor in a big curly mess.

“It should be there,” they said, face flat. “‘S where I always put it.”

He took a quick glance back over at the games. “You sure? Maybe Chara fu—, messed with it?” he asked, silently relieved at avoiding a slip-up. Frisk never did like it when he swore.

They shook their head, dragging their hair through the carpet like a dry mop. “They hate platformers ‘cause they’re bad at em. Wouldn’t touch Smwuh with a ten foot pole.”

“Swmuh?”

“Yeah,” they said brightly. “Ess emm double-yew. Swmuh.”

“Uh,” he uh’d, confident that Frisk was wrong about… _something_ , but also keenly aware that the issue was far too petty to be worth pressing “Okay then. Anyway, I believe you, but I still don’t see it here, so…”

“Look again? Can help.”

“ _Or_ ,” he said, rolling his R’s. “We could play something else. You know, on that big ol’ expensive console we asked for on Gyftmas that can probably shoot down ICBMs and sh— stuff.”

They awkwardly crossed their arms, not sure of where to keep them leveled at. They settled for down by their chin. “ _You_ asked for. _I_ was happy with the Snes. Don’t need no newfangled nothin’.”

“Newfang— I’m like one hundred years older than you, Frisk, and when I was your age this…” he gestured vaguely to the stained, yellowed plastic brick laying on the floor, somehow hot-wired into their modern TV. “This friggin’ _junker_ was already ancient. I played the crap out of this thing, sure, but only because it was all I had. I don’t even know how the heck _you_ ever found one.”

“But didja play Swmuh?” they asked, deadpan.

“Well, no, I didn’t have that game, but—”

“Gotta play it. You’ll like it. Promise.”

He sighed. “Can’t I just go download an emulator and—”

“Nuh-uh. Not the same. It’s in there, I know it is.” They flopped clumsily onto the couch and sat upright. “Lemme help.”

“It’s okay, Frisk, I’ll find it,” he said with a gentle smile. “You hyped me up and now I wanna check out this game from what, the nineteen eighties? We should go to Dad’s place and ask about his disco phase, too.”

They snorted. “Really?”

“Nah, we didn’t get disco in the underground for some reason,” he said, pressing the cabinet drawer shut with a _cli-click_ and moving onto the next. “We skipped right from beach rock to grunge. Dad told me the transition was _super_ weird… oh, hey.” He grabbed a cartridge from the bottom cabinet, where all the old video tapes were kept. Another set of plastic relics from a bygone age. He checked the label, and sure enough, it was “Swmuh”. He scanned around the cabinet, confused, and noticed that it looked as if someone had recently rooted through the tapes. None were misplaced, but they weren’t as dusty as he expected, and there were fresh fingerprints on some of the edges.

Nobody ever touched those tapes. It was an unspoken agreement that it’d just be a sore spot.

“Well, I found it,” Asriel said, holding the cartridge up over his shoulder so Frisk could see. They gave a brief cheer. “You been watching old videos lately?” he asked.

“Those? No. Why?”

“ _Someone_ has...” He leaned over and loaded the game in, flipping the big purple _POWER_ switch. Cheery music played as the TV was filled with bright colors and an absolutely pitiful four-by-three resolution that left big black bars on each side of the screen. “Well hey, there we go,” he said, standing up off his knees and shooting Frisk a smile.

“Come sit!” they said, bouncing excitedly in their seat and picking the small plastic controller off the floor.

Asriel grabbed his own controller and sat next to them, close enough to facilitate their inevitable snuggling. He had long ago decided that it was simply best to give in rather than have them unsubtly scooching over towards him for the next hour. Distance and personal space were typically forfeit around Frisk; he just felt lucky that he didn’t happen to mind.

He was surprised to find out that they’d be taking turns, the game’s “Two Player” mode being of arguable legitimacy. Still, he stuck by them, trying to learn Smwuh’s ins and outs. His mind occasionally wandering to the shifted tapes with light fingerprints on the sides. He glanced at his palm; those couldn’t have been Mom’s, only humans leave prints like that.

 

…

 

 

                The screen’s glow strained Charas eyes as they sat with their elbows resting on their knees, listening carefully for the faint whispers of their and Asriel’s voices. They were taking enough of a risk having the volume on at all, this late at night. But they needed to hear.

Asriel was holding the camera, of course. They felt a budding frustration as he kept it focused on them, not putting it down. He was pestering them about their knitting, asking what they were making and if they knew any cool knitting tricks like flipping the needles around their fingers or… well, whatever he thought a “knitting trick” would entail. They weren’t sure what he meant at the time (and said just so), and they weren’t sure now, hunched over with bagged eyes and a thin frown.

Chara, the old Chara, shifted on their bed and held the practice scarf they were building in front of their face. _“What do you care?”_ they asked him. _“It isn’t even done yet.”_

 _“But I wanna know anyway! It looks so colorful and it’s got this cool rainbow pattern on it, and I just— I wanna know!”_ he said. They would almost describe him as whining, they way he was trying to coax them, but it was so much more welcome than that. There was a brightness behind his voice, an untarnished sheen of innocence that they had grown to love so dearly, way back when. They had quickly learned to take full advantage of it.

Their frustration only grew the longer they watched, Asriel locking himself in a back-and forth, trying to drag an answer out of them.

 _Just show me Asriel,_ they thought. _I need to see him. Let me see him._

 _“Alright,”_ they watched themselves say, with a bowed head and a gentle smile. _“If you must know what I’m doing, I can show you, I suppose. If you wish.”_

The camera swayed; they imagined it was due to his enthused nodding. _“I do!”_

 _“Okay, well, put the camera down, first,”_ they said, patting the spot on the bed next to them. They hastily muted the TV as he placed the camera down on their nightstand facing towards them. Asriel never was much of a cameraman; the sharp crunch of the microphone being knocked around would’ve woken the whole neighborhood.

They held up the scarf, stretching it out and showing off the display of bright, neon colors. _“Cooool!”_ Asriel said with a big smile. _“...What is it?”_

_“It’s a scarf. I am only making it for practice, but…”_

_“But?”_

_“I was thinking that I would make it. For you. As a gift, I suppose you could say, if you wanted to be overly sentimental—”_

They were cut short when Asriel wrapped his arms around them, pulling them into a tight hug and nuzzling his nose against their cheek, squishing it up to their eye. _“I love it already,”_ he said.

They glanced towards the camera and flushed pink with a sort of “god help me” look on their face before sighing and hugging him back.

Chara smiled and leaned back into the couch, folding their hands into their lap. There it was again, that sunshine-warm fondness that glowed off of him, the same kind they used to call naivete. They could bask in it all night long.

They felt a lump in their throat when the realized they saw it in themselves, too. It was faint, almost untraceable, but it was there, glowing under the wryness of their smiles and the smooth lines around their eyes, still barely youthful and full of a grim sort of hope. Not sunken and shadowed, staring emptily into the distance whenever they let their mind wander, like an empty home with the lights on.

The screen went black as the tape ran out, leaving them in darkness. By the time they decided not to simply fall asleep on the couch, their eyes had adjusted to the light, and they glided back upstairs and slid into bed.

They took one last look over at their brother, lying stomach-down in his bed, his face held taught, mouth a thin line before they rolled back over and stared out the window. The moon wasn’t visible, that night. There was nothing to replace the missing sunshine.

 

…

 

                Asriel stopped by the mailbox out front, clenching and unclenching his fists, the steady thump of a drum set still tinnily ringing out through his headphones, now dangling from his pocket. He took a deep breath and shifted his weight from foot to foot, glancing towards his house. The blinds were closed today, and while he could see a few slivers of light shining through, he couldn’t see inside the living room. He took another deep breath, reaching up to fiddle with his ear as he checked up and down the street. Nobody was outside that evening; he couldn’t see any of the neighbors, and they probably couldn’t see him. He took another deep breath and slammed his fist down on top of the mailbox, denting it inwards. He rubbed at his wrist and inspected the damage he’d done.

“I’m good now,” he muttered under his breath. “All good.” He wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth or not.

Something stupid had set him off again. He’d spent the afternoon cooking with Papyrus, and just as he was leaving, right at the end of this good day of his, he went to say goodbye to Sans. A measure of politeness, not done because he actually cared to, but because it was the right thing to do. He had never been fond of Sans, but he saw no reason to not at least get along with him. “Thanks for having me,” he had said, slipping his jacket back on.

To that, Sans replied, “for sure. someone’s gotta keep an eye on you.”

_Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you._

He shot him a glare soon after, the kind that demands an explanation. The skeleton had only stared dumbly back, apparently oblivious.

_Keep an eye on you._

The words dragged through his memory again, like a loosed bumper scraping along the asphalt. He ground his teeth and clenched his fists. God forbid he forget, even for a second, what he had done. Like he needed a reminder, from _him_ nonetheless. God forbid he have even one nice day. That he can spend some time with his friend without some sanctimonious prick holding a grudge over something he doesn’t even remember.

“I bet you say that to Frisk when they go to hug you,” he said, eyeing the mailbox. Maybe one more couldn’t hurt? “Keep guilt-tripping us all. Just don’t let anyone remind you how long you waited to stop us.”

He took one more deep breath and let his arms hang limp. “Okay, I’m good. For real.” He did what he could to smooth out the dent in the mailbox, with little success. He sighed and headed for the front door, trying to not think about the fifty or more percent chance that the skeleton hadn’t meant anything by it.

 

Asriel left his jacket on the hook and walked into the living room. In her chair was his mother, chipping away chapter by chapter at an obscenely long door-stopper of a novel, her reading glasses perched delicately on the end of her nose. On the couch was Chara, with Frisk in their lap, the two of them flipping through a scrapbook together as Chara wrapped them up with affection and a soft tone. He almost did a double-take at the sight; they so rarely indulge Frisk’s clinginess around others. Normally, it’s only when there’s nobody around to see it, or they at least assume so, that they will reciprocate Frisk’s bottomless affection with their own.

He returned his mother’s silent wave as he snuck up behind them, placing both paws on the back of the couch. “What’cha up to?” he asked, fully expecting them to jump and start sputtering away. Instead, they and Frisk both turned to smile at him and say hello.

“I was showing Frisk some old pictures is all,” they answered, gesturing to the page, lined with childhood photographs.

“Huh,” he said, blinking and letting his hands fall to his sides. “And uh, what’s with the human booster seat you got goin’ on?”

They reached past Frisk and flipped over another page. They had barely looked at even one of the pictures on it before they flipped to the next. “...Oh, you know those silly safety regulations. Besides, you’re hardly one to talk,” they said with a smile.

“What?”

They tilted the book so he could see. “Take a gander, Azzy. See, there are you hugging me on Gyftmas morning,” they said, tracing their finger along the first row of pictures. “And there are you hugging me on my ‘birthday’… and there are you hugging me in the garden… and in the bathroom?”

Frisk giggled and looked back at him. “There’s a lot of em in here. ‘S so cute!”

Asriel hummed. “Where did you even get that old thing, anyway?”

“It was a hand-me-down from Dad,” they said. “He thought I could use a tangible reminder of what a cuddlebug you are.”

“They are not wrong, son,” Toriel said, still focused on reading but brandishing a warm smile. “You have always been very loving and affectionate.”

“That is quite true, Toriel,” Chara said, sounding notably smug. “Quite true. I even used to get smooches, you know.”

He huffed. “On the _cheek._ And only about three times.”

“Five times,” Chara corrected. “I counted. But none in these recent years…”

“Yes,” Toriel added, lifting her eyes from her book to raise an eyebrow at her son. “I have noticed that as well. I used to get plenty of smooches.”

“Never got _any…”_ Frisk mumbled, clearly salty. The three of them stared at him, their expressions begging a silent, _“Well?”_

He crossed his arms and looked off to the side. “Okay, yeah, this isn’t embarrassing.”

“I’m only teasing, Azzy,” they said, smile thinning out.

He stared past them at the album, a myriad of things he’d almost but not quite forgotten out on display. He felt a sort of tingling wave run down his spine— not so severe as to be a shiver, but it still grabbed his attention. Something about it felt uncanny.

“Well, knock it off,” he said lightly. He hoped his cheery tone wasn’t coming off as artificial. “I’ll be upstairs, you two uh, have fun.”

“Can join if you wanna,” Frisk said, glancing towards the empty spot on the couch.

Chara nodded. “Yes, of course. There are some. Silly ones of me in here, too. Ones that you would probably get a laugh out of. It could be fun,” they said, their smile widening again, back into the kind of smile he loved to see on them. Warm and genuine, no fronting or calculations. And yet, it didn’t quite reach their eyes. He couldn’t help but stare at the way their eyelids seemed to bag, the bruise-dark circles standing out like ink stains on a fresh page. If he were to squint, they would look as old as Toriel and even more tired. He didn’t notice that part of them often. Usually, they seemed to hide it, or else it simply wasn’t there, leaving them, at a glance, looking just as youthful as they’re supposed to be.

He darted his eyes towards the stairs and back again. “...Maybe some other time. I got some stuff I wanted to do before bedtime.”

Chara nodded again, their smile now gone entirely as they reached up to straighten out their hair. He tried not to let their brief flash of disappointment get to him.

 

Asriel rubbed at his wrist as he sat on the edge of his bed, trying to get a hold of the little fragments of things he was feeling so he could ball them all up into something that could be made sense of.

_Someone’s gotta keep an eye on you._

He sighed. Meaningless words. The kind he decided to latch onto every now and then and twist and twist until it was something worth seething over. He tried to tell himself it was okay, that he hadn’t done anything wrong because of it this time, aside from that little thing with the mailbox. Yet still, he felt defeated.

His mind wandered back to the scrapbook, the “hand-me-down” that had slipped his memory entirely up until now. And he couldn’t help but muse that the Asriel in those pictures would’ve let meaningless words like those fly right on past him.

 

…

 

                “Are you preoccupied?” Chara asked, leaning over Asriel’s shoulder to get an eyeful of what he was working on; essentially nothing thus far, only a few outlines of what may have been a person, or perhaps simply a gaudy lamp. Still, what little there was looked bizarrely professional and purposeful. They forgot—quite often, in fact—just how good he had become at artistry. He had always borne a passion for drawing, charting out endless worlds of blurred colorful lines until his crayon had been sanded down to a useless little nub. Now, he worked on projects for his classes, running checklists of design principles and perspective rules and color wheels through his head as his pencil tapped and tapped and tapped against his desk.

“Space,” he droned. Chara took a small step back, still tilted towards him with their hands folded behind their back. “Yeah, I’m doing a project,” he said, eyes scanning up and down the page.

“Business or pleasure?”

“Class. Due sometime this month. I don’t know, I forgot already.” He set his pencil down, only to pick it back up and resume his morse-code screeching a moment later. He sighed. “Probably tomorrow, with my luck. Why?”

“Would you care to head out?” they asked with a chipper smile. Better than the ones they usually practiced, but still not quite as appealing as they wanted it to be.

Asriel leaned back in his chair. The wooden legs let out a short _creak_. “Out where?”

Their smile faltered for a moment before returning. “...Wherever we choose to wander.”

He turned to stare at them as though there was a sparrow roosting in their hair. “What do you want, Chara?” he asked, deliberate and slow.

Their head cocked slightly to the right. “Pardon me?”

“You’re doing that _thing_ again. Your body language is all on purpose and you’re talking like someone trying to pass as human after reading a pile of legal papers. You do it whenever you aren’t being up front because you’re too embarrassed to say what you mean or you know that I won’t like it. So what do you want? _”_

Whatever was left of Chara’s smile vanished in an instance. “I do not ‘want’ anything, I am only asking if you would wish to accom— wanna join me for a walk,” they said, letting their hands fall down to their sides.

There was a short pause before he set his pencil down on the desk with a sharp _tap._ “Alright, sure. Let’s go,” he said, dragging himself out of his seat.

Chara’s smile returned, but it felt forced even to them. There was an unease behind it now that they had hoped to avoid.

 

Asriel locked the door and tugged at his jacket, trying to adjust it to feel natural. “So are we going to pick up Frisk...?” he asked.

Chara stopped short of the sidewalk. “No,” they said flatly. “Mom was going to on her way home from work. They should be back by dinner.”

“Cutting it a little close, though, huh?”

They shrugged, tracing their hand absently over the new dent in their mailbox. “...Hmm… well, you know Frisk. They love their Napstablook time.”

“Does Undyne owe you money again?” He kept himself from staring at the ding he’d left the other day.

“No. She’s become quite reluctant to make bets with me. Besides, I know you aren’t fond of shakedowns.” They stepped out onto the sidewalk, looking left and right before settling on left.

“So where we headed, then?”

They frowned. He caught half of it from the side. “Nowhere. Only out for an evening stroll, Azzy.”

Asriel watched them set off down the road for a moment before following after them. He didn’t bother speeding up; his legs were longer than theirs and he’d have to slow down soon enough anyway.

“So how have you been?” Chara asked with a casual tone, admiring the yellow glow of the evening sky as they walked.

“...Uh. Alright? I’ve been alright.”

They nodded. “Good.”

“You?”

“I have been fine… oh!” They stopped in front of a neighbor’s yard— Asriel didn’t remember who it was that lived there, they were too far down the street, but there was always all sorts of wildflowers engaged in a free-for-all in their front yard. Chara plucked a lilac hanging over the sidewalk and rigged it into a ring, tying the stem into a knot.

“Syringa vulgaris,” they said with a wide smile, reaching up to ordain Asriel with the ‘crown’. They cocked their head to the side and crossed their arms, sizing up his new look. “Very nice. The violet matches your coat wonderfully.”

“...Okay,” he said, brushing the flower off his horns. “We gonna keep going?”

Their smile flattened. “Oh. Yes, let’s.”

 

Suburbs and stop signs turned to city blocks and traffic lights as they walked. Traffic, on foot and otherwise, was low, leaving a sort of sleepy feeling into the air. They shared few if any words, the sounds of the odd passing car or the beep of a crosswalk button occasionally intruding upon the silence that they left alone.

Asriel took a quick breath as they finished crossing the street. “Was there something you needed to talk about? We’re far away enough from home, I don’t think anyone’s following us. If that’s what you’re worried about.”

Chara scratched at their wrist. “No. Nothing important.”

“And there’s nowhere you wanted to go?”

“No.”

He sighed. “Are we heading back soon? It’s starting to get late and I don’t want to miss dinner for nothing.”

They turned and shot him a plastic smile. “Yes. Yes, soon… only one more block or so and we can call it a day.”

He nodded. “Fine.”

They continued on, turning around the corner of a bookshop to go down a side street. The scenery was notably worse; power lines and cracked, dusty pavement. Chara themselves would have personally described it as exactly the kind of place that drug deals and street brawls happen, although they showed no signs of hesitation or displeasure as they strolled along. Asriel followed in their wake, his eyes downcast and searching for broken glass.

Eventually, they came to a dead end, a vacant lot with a few parking spaces and a loading bay for a warehouse. There were no alleyways out other than the one they had entered through. All of the buildings that formed the lot’s walls were almost certainly private, with their doors locked. Long, low shadows lay sprawled across the pavement, the setting sun hidden away. Chara’s pace slowed as they walked over to a yellow concrete divider with chipped paint and edges and sat down.

“Dead end,” they said, monotone. “I was hoping we would end up somewhere nicer. Although I suppose that’s part of the fun.”

Asriel blinked once, then twice. “No, no it really isn’t. This isn’t even where you wanted to be?”

“Azzy, I told you, I wasn’t going anywh—”

“Don’t ‘Azzy’ me, Chara, and I _know_ ,” he said, raising his voice. “But it’s already six. Mom’s going to be mad at us again for being out too late and _not telling her_. All so we could what, end up in an empty parking lot? You _still_ won’t even tell me what this is about, even though I have made it _very_ clear to you that—”

 _“IT’S NOT ABOUT FUCKING ANYTHING!”_ Their voice rang against the brick walls with a shallow echo, bouncing back at them like the report of a gunshot. Their nails peeled off a few flakes of paint as they dug their fingers into the concrete. “I wanted to spend some god damn time together. You know, what _friends_ do. But how dare I. Why, the audacity of it all.”

Asriel shook his head and turned on his heel. “I’ll see you at home,” he said, voice low as he walked away.

“What happened to us?”

He stopped and turned back around. Chara sat in silence, arm braced on their knee and their head in their hand, their other limp arm laying as a bridge between their legs.

If he had to pick a word to describe them, he’d say pitiful.

“Well,” he started, almost stuttering. “You manipulated me into helping you commit suicide and got us both killed.”

They winced and stared back at him from under their brow. “So you’ve noticed it too, then? This…” they trailed off, hand tracing an erratic circle in the air. “This rift. Between us.”

He gave a slow nod. “...Yep.”

“Is that all it takes? One awful mistake, and everything we had is gone? Years of trust and support razed to the ground in a day? Is that how fragile we always were?”

“I don’t know.”

Chara put their head in their hands. “I’m sorry.”

“I forgive you.”

“...No you don’t. You never did.”

 

Asriel shuffled over to the barrier and sat next to them. “I thought you’d been acting strange lately. With the photo books and videotapes, I mean. And today overall. I guess this is what that was about.”

“Mm.”

“...It’s not gone. We’re still here. I don’t hate you.”

They laughed, airy and joyless. “Give it time. Maybe months, maybe years. You’ll give it more thought and slowly, you will start to realize just how much I took from you.”

He sighed. “That’s not—”

“Are we going to end up like Mom and Dad?”

Asriel squirmed in his seat and swallowed the hitch in his throat. “You gotta be married first to have a divorce, and I don’t think that’s gonna happen.”

“You know what I mean. You remember how close they were, and you’ve seen how they are now.”

“You’re being ridiculous.”

They turned to glare at him. He couldn’t help but notice the thin damp streaks running down their face. “I’m _serious_ , Asriel. Are we drifting apart? Is it going to just get worse and worse until we can’t even be in the same room anymore? Is that all our friendship is anymore? Temporary? All the time we’ve spent together, all the pain we’ve felt apart, everything we’ve done to hold on and bring ourselves back from the _dead_ , was it all to realize that we never wanted it anyway?”

He stared past them, hands folded in his lap.

“Do you have any idea how terrifying that is for me?” they asked with pleading eyes and a strained whisper. “My worst nightmare, losing you, coming to pass not because you were taken away but because you _left._ And I know how hypocritical that must sound coming from me, but—”

“I’m scared too,” he said, interrupting. They shut their mouth and leaned back. “This isn’t all about you. All the times I killed you and Frisk, for _fun_ — look, we’ve been pretty fucking far from good to each other. And we’ve traded more damage than I think either of us would like to admit. And you’re spending all this time with Frisk, now…”

“That isn’t the same!” they shouted, shooting up straight. “They are _not_ your replacement, They’re. Different. What we have is different.”

“Don’t you worry about the same thing when _I_ hang out with them?”

They blinked. “I. No. No, that is different as well. We have the same thing with them. We’re older, we look after them, we’re not…”

“Equals?” he said bluntly.

They turned their head away. “It sounds really shitty when you put it like that, but yes. Not the way the two of us are. Or used to be.”

“We’re both still here, aren’t we? We’re sitting here talking about this off in the ass-end of nowhere. That counts for something.”

They sighed. “You don’t understand. You are so. Different, now. You used to be so full of joy and bottomless optimism. It was hard to find a moment _away_ from you. And you used to love exploring. Going on walks to nowhere for its own sake. Now, you’re…” they said, trailing off.

“Not the same wide-eyed little kid with big hopes for the future. More cynical now, worse for wear. Seen too much, done too much. Which one of us am I talking about, Chara?”

They shook their head. “So what, we’re both the same jaded asshole now? Is that where you’re going?

“Where I’m going is that you’re different, too, and I’m not blind to it. I know you got this… _lovely_ image of yourself as always having been some wicked wise-to-the-world cynic but you were a _dork,_ Chara,” he said with a hesitant grin. His sibling’s cheeks flushed. “A dork with a paper-thin veil of detachment who was ready to hand the world on a silver platter to the first people who were nice to them. Neither of us are the same anymore. But we’re still side by side, right? That’s all that matters. I don’t give a damn about what we _used_ to be. We’re here now.”

“...You are still skilled at bending over backward in order to cheer me up. That’s one thing.”

He stood from the barrier, brushing paint chips off his pants. “You’re gosh-darn right I am. Now for real,” he said, extending his hand. “Let’s go home, I got shit to do and cold rice to eat. We can do something goofy and sentimental together tomorrow.”

They laughed as he helped them to their feet. “I can’t believe you just swatted away my month-long existential crisis with an argument that could be summed up as ‘Sucks don’t worry about it’.”

“That’s just the short of it, dude.” He smiled and put a hand on their shoulder. “But I’m your brother and I’ll always love you. So don’t worry about it.”

Chara rubbed at their eyes and returned his smile. “I love you too, Azzy. Always.”

 

…

 

 

                The third scrapbook ended as abruptly as the two before it— Asgore had ran out of space after cramming in all the Gyftmas photos he could and left only a small corner of the back cover to write, _“201X, another great year, and our third with our human child!”_ Without a word, Chara let the cover fall shut and placed the book on the bed at their side.

There was one more book, of course. The fourth. The one that would cut out halfway through. They thought about looking inside it, too, for completionist sake. The insecure desperation driving them to take in every last memory was gone, but they were still certain that a few of their old favorites were yet to be found. It almost felt wasteful to leave them all in the scrapbooks, where they had to be hunted for instead of out on prominent display.

They blinked and sat up straight with a start as they remembered the picture frame in their nightstand. They silently pulled the drawer open and moved their box of fancy chocolates to the side. Hidden underneath was a plain wood and glass picture frame. Inside was a picture Frisk had asked Mom to take of themselves, Chara and Asriel, all standing in front of their new home on the surface.

Frisk was off to the right. Asriel, in the center. And to the left was Chara, huddled in close to their siblings with a sunshine-bright smile— it didn’t hold a candle to the ones their siblings were wearing, but even they felt an obligation to admit it was nice.

They put the scrapbook away and propped up the picture frame on their nightstand. Out of all the pictures they had, that one was their favorite.

 

**Author's Note:**

> don't ask me when this is supposed to be set time does not exist in my world


End file.
